Co-founded by middle school friends Brian Park and Andrew Hong, Hank is a social-minded digital platform with a twist: The site is dedicated to helping active older adults get off the computer and out into the world to explore the activities they love with like-minded people.
To learn more, we talked with Brian (who, of course, is no longer in middle school) about Hank, the inspiration behind it, and the experience of working with the AgeTech Collaborative™.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you tell us a bit about Hank, and why you founded it?
The idea for Hank came from two places. First, I've worked my entire career in tech, and in all that time I never worked with anyone over the age of 45. So there’s a huge gap in the industry. And because as technologists we’re taught to “build for ourselves” — that means that no one has been focused on building products and solutions for people who are 50-plus.
Second, we wanted to solve the rising epidemic of loneliness among active older adults. When my own parents became empty nesters, they were very intentional about how they wanted to live their empty-nesting lives. That served as an inspiration as well.
What is Hank and how does it work?
Hank is geared toward active adults who are 55-plus. It’s a website where people can meet others who have similar interests and discover activities to do with them. Users can log in and find a ton of different interest groups and in-person events associated with those interests. We focus on in-real-life interaction, not digital interaction.
For example, of one of our early users, Sandy, loves cooking. She joined a Hank cooking group and then took an in-person Mediterranean cooking class with 13 other people, who were also from Hank. She met new friends that she continues to hang out with today. Another member attended a coffee chat through Hank and ended up taking a weekend trip with the people he met. The focus is really to provide a place where our members can meet new people and make lasting relationships.
What kinds of groups are forming on Hank?
We seeded Hank with a few groups, but now members are creating groups for everything. There are groups for art lovers, board gamers, walkers, people who love hamburgers — everything. We had no clue there would be this kind of variety with the groups. It’s been a delightful surprise for us, because we really want folks to “find their people.” We want to make sure that whatever your interests are, you can find people like you. We want our members to create groups for everything.
What sets you apart from some of the popular social media sites we all know about?
Typical social media sites are focused on incentivizing you to stay on the platform itself for as long as possible. But we’re trying to get you off the platform and into real life as soon as possible. Because life isn’t about sitting in front of your computer all day. That’s not what this demographic wants — they want to be out in the real world.
How do you address safety concerns that some people might have?
Good question. We have been very thoughtful about this, and we’ve talked to a lot of experts. We approach it in three ways, modeled on industry best practices. First, we learned that community reporting — members themselves reporting bad actors — is the strongest way to police the community. The community knows who they want to associate with, and who they don’t.
Second, we’ve crafted tight community guidelines so that everyone understands what it takes to be part of Hank.
And third is account verification; we’ve invested in a lot of tooling so that people can take a picture of themselves with an ID and so forth, so that we can verify you on the platform. This is all stricter than most other social media platforms, which we do so that we can create a safe community for our members.
You participated in AARP Innovation Labs’ accelerator program. How did that help you build Hank?
We worked with so many amazing people at the Innovation Labs. The process accelerated us at least a year in our learnings. We were partnered with a marketing expert; we met with her on a weekly basis. She gave us a lot of insight into crafting messages — how to reach and talk to our members. And then we were able to actually test our messages. We got continual feedback on what resonated and what didn’t within our demographic. So we were able to understand on a very granular level how best to communicate to Hank members.
Where do you hope Hank will be in 10 years?
Right now, we’re just in New York, and we’re looking to expand. But the real opportunity as we see it is to carry the torch for correcting the misconception that older adults aren’t interested in living life to its fullest. One of the biggest things we’ve learned is that older adults don’t think of themselves as “old.” They’ve spent their entire lives caring for loved ones and working, and now they’re finally able to focus on themselves. They've been looking forward to living, and we want them to explore new passions, meet new people and help them to really live this part of life.
#SpotlightOn